Month: September 2011

Tunisia was the spark of the revolution that is the Arab Spring. The Tunisian foreign minister has announced that the transitional government is ready for elections to take place next month on October 23. The elections will be the first since the overthrow of the long-serving dictator and more than 100 parties will be contesting seats in parliament. He said it “will be really a landmark in the modern history of Tunisia,” and it is “probably going to be bellweather model for the others if the Tunisian experience takes root and succeeds.”

It isn’t certain, though. In the same interview he said he hoped the people “would put aside their ‘egocentric’ demands, protests and strikes and focus on the best interests of the country.” Still, nobody doubts that Tunisia’s prospects for liberal government respectful of individual rights are much better than Egypt’s.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Egypt is a much bigger, more complex country with many divisions and problems unique to it. But the fact that Egypt is so much more subject to the US domain of influence is one reason it is falling behind Tunisia.

James Traub in Foreign Policy:

Egypt is a mess. This month, the country’s interim military government, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), issued Decree 193, stipulating that the country’s long-standing emergency law would be expanded to include such offenses as “infringing on others’ right to work,” “impeding the flow of traffic,” and “spreading false information in the media.” The SCAF had promised that the law would be repealed by September, before scheduled elections began; a few days ago, officials declared that it would be extended until June 2012. No one knows when a constitution will be drafted or presidential elections held, because the SCAF won’t say so. Egypt’s military rulers seem not so much determined as paralyzed.

There are concerns, writes Traub, that “Egypt’s revolution is in danger” and that there are fears “that the SCAF won’t leave, that Islamists will control the new government, and that the interim council’s drift and opacity will deepen chaos” to the point of jeopardizing the prospects of good governance.

The ruling military council reactivated the emergency law, which they had promised to do away with, just after Egyptian protesters stormed the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, fed up with the relentless hostility and disenfranchisement of the Palestinians. They did this after heavy pressure from the Obama administration to crack down and get protesters under control, or else face “consequences.” The emergency law, let us remember, consists of trying “suspects” in emergency state security courts, censoring the press if it “endangers the stability and security,” and cracking down on mass demonstrations.

US pressure was central to imposing harsh restrictions on democracy then. And the US has leverage. In July, 125 tanks, M256 Armament Systems, M2 .50 caliber machine guns, 7.62mm machine guns, spare parts, maintenance, support equipment, personnel training and other related elements of logistics and program support were announced. Another $1.5 billion in U.S. aid has been allocated to Egypt for fiscal year 2012, mostly in security assistance (that is, military stuff). And unfortunately, many in the ruling council are veterans of the Mubarak regime who was so closely aligned with Washington for so long you’d think it were Israeli.

Last month, Egypt and the US postponed a long-standing joint military-to-military exercise, but it was not a sign of weakening ties between the two. Quite the opposite. Just as Mubarak’s unleashing of brutality on protesting civilians back at the beginning of the revolution was recognized as US-induced and supported, so too are the ruling military council’s current actions. Ahead of the beginning of Mubarak’s trial, the Egyptian army cleared Tahrir Square with force, detaining hundreds and brutally beating many.

In contrast, US aid to the Tunisian government has declined since the revolution. US aid and connection to Egypt’s rulers, despite consistent rejection of it by the population, has continued unabated.

We know that an Egyptian government whose policies reflect the will of the people is starkly contrasted with what Washington would prefer (hence, propping up a dictator for decades). The fact that it’s not clearer to people that continued US-Egyptian alliance is detrimental to authentic democratic progress is a pity. Success in Egypt could propel other Arab countries towards independence. If only the US would get out of the way.

The Net is abuzz today with the irony, that Peter Van Buren,  a 23-year foreign service officer with the U.S Department of State, may be the only department personnel to be fired over the WikiLeaks’ scandal. Van Buren, who just published the book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Iraqi People this week, relayed in a powerful column at Tom Dispatch this morning how he was called in, interrogated and accused of disclosing classified material. His crime? Embedding links to WikiLeaked cables in a post on his personal blog.

Van Buren, who has been featured here on Antiwar.com and on Antiwar Radio, has written an explosive book about his time on a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Iraq. It is at turns cringeworthy in its descriptions of how we patronized, condescended to, misunderstood and neglected ordinary Iraqis, and outrageous in the amount of money we threw at them and the Iraqi government over there, only to have the vast majority of those taxpayer dollars lost down a rabbit hole. Van Buren is funny, acerbic, truthful and very sensitive — which is probably why he felt the need to risk everything to write this book in the first place.

The State Department is going after the messenger, but we need to keep a laser focus on the message: that our post-invasion efforts to “reconstruct” Iraq in the name of “counterinsurgency” has been a gigantic failure, the proportions of which we will still be measuring for years to come.

I interviewed Van Buren last week and will feature the latest developments in his story in an upcoming column here at Antiwar.com.

Here’s an excerpt from his Tom Dispatch piece today:

The agents demanded to know who might be helping me with my blog (“Name names!”), if I had donated any money from my upcoming book on my wacky year-long State Department assignment to a forward military base in Iraq, and if so to which charities, the details of my contract with my publisher, how much money (if any) I had been paid, and — by the way — whether I had otherwise “transferred” classified information.

Had I, they asked, looked at the WikiLeaks site at home on my own time on my own computer? Every blog post, every Facebook post, and every Tweet by every State Department employee, they told me, must be pre-cleared by the Department prior to “publication.” Then they called me back for a second 90-minute interview, stating that my refusal to answer questions would lead to my being fired, never mind the Fifth (or the First) Amendments.

Why me? It’s not like the Bureau of Diplomatic Security has the staff or the interest to monitor the hundreds of blogs, thousands of posts, and millions of tweets by Foreign Service personnel. The answer undoubtedly is my new book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.  Its unvarnished portrait of State’s efforts and the U.S. at work in Iraq has clearly angered someone, even though one part of State signed off on the book under internal clearance procedures some 13 months ago. I spent a year in Iraq leading a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) and sadly know exactly what I am talking about. DS monitoring my blog is like a small-town cop pulling over every African-American driver: vindictive, selective prosecution. “Ya’ll be careful in these parts, ‘hear, ‘cause we’re gonna set an example for your kind of people.”

Silly as it seems, such accusations carry a lot of weight if you work for the government. DS can unilaterally, and without any right of appeal or oversight, suspend your security clearance and for all intents and purposes end your career.